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  1. - Top - End - #151
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    Only imps answer mortal summons. Then imp will be messenger between summoner and anything below archdevil, higher devils only bother to deal with mortals if there's something big going on. Amnizu would only come if there's some sort of grand administrative task that'll advance the infernal cause; they'd set up logistics for legions of the aspiring evil overlord or prepare a sufficiently oppressive taxation system for conquered territories or help scheme to take over an advanced bureaucratic system. Amnizu wouldn't fight for mortals, all devils refuse to do things outside their rank's purpose.
    (it's better to just summon daemons, they take the payment and don't ask questions and don't nitpick)

    And there's more than enough sexy (in DnD and elsewhere). It's tiresome by this point.


    v: Hags got rehaggled. Also demodands got retconned for the better.
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  2. - Top - End - #152
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    Hags reproduce the mortal way with any creature capable of reproduction but the result is a half-fiendish creature instead of a hag? I think that's a bit unclear. Is it that hags must breed with other hags to make more hags and w/ anyone else make half-fiends, or do they birth hags (regardless) and beget half-fiends (on non-hags)?

  3. - Top - End - #153
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    And now for something completely different: paar-taay!!!


    GREAT MOTHER OF BEHOLDERS (demigoddess)
    Domains: light, perception, beauty, hallucinogens, alcohol, partying, beholders

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    Troglodyte legends claim the Great Mother of Beholders assaulted their god to steal his eyes and they’re blind as a result of this heinous crime. Beholders scoff at that, saying Laogzed was the thief who stole two of their Great Mother’s eyes because the uneyed wretch was jealous of her beautiful eyes. Troglodyte contrarians traditionally retaliate by questioning just how Laogzed could’ve known the Great Mother’s eyes were beautiful if he was eyeless to begin with, then usually get petrified or disintegrated, as patience is no eye tyrant trait (which is one of the reasons why most beings usually don’t argue with beholders). However, neither side knows how right both them are or the actual sequence of bizarre events that led to their ancient and extremely unbalanced feud.

    Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, which is why beholders are usually content to float in place and just stare at everything around them for days, marvelling at the beauty of what looks like a bunch of gray rocks to the lesser creatures. It’s also why beholders can get extremely violent when their contemplation of prettiness is disturbed. According to the few relatively benevolent beholders who interact with other creatures, they pity the pathetic range of vision that every other race of the multiverse have been saddled with and helped wizards of various races develop a number of infravision and ultravision spells to let them have the tiniest bit of glimpse into the real beauty of existence. It never worked well, for humanoid minds were unable to handle the colors beyond their laughably tiny red-to-violet spectrum and, even with magic, still see them as strange and distorted masses of shades of the colors they know (though at least they can see a few feet into solid objects now, which is better than what they started with). Their Great Mother too, as can be expected, is easily transfixed by the beauty of literally anything and she can spend centuries inspecting the lattice of a mineral vein fifty feet inside a rock wall down to its molecular structure, which is why she’s a distant and neglectful goddess to her children.

    That is also the reason why the Great Mother of Beholders stuck around Tiamat and watched her create the next species of abominations to infest Elemental Plane of Water after beholders. Which was the troglodytes. Having made 11 eyes for each beholder, Tiamat was bored of it so the race of troglodytes were made without eyes. Entirety of their featureless face functioned as a sort of pressure pad instead, letting them sense the tiniest changes in their environment in the manner of a snake’s tongue. The Great Mother could of course see the incredibly complex web of nerves and detection cells lying beneath troglodytes’ carapace covered empty faces and precisely how they operated. She became enamoured of their “sightless eyes” and the undescribably beautiful dance of electrical impulses playing out on the nerves just beneath the skin/carapace thing covering front of the head, so started to follow them instead of returning to help her children protect themselves from long entrenched races of Water that were trying to subjugate and enslave them (such as krakens and aboleths). Thanks to her endless stalking of the troglodytes, Great Mother also got to witness the birth of Laogzed the Faceripper (who wasn’t called that at first). Unlike his people, Laogzed wasn’t scared of the Great Mother of Beholders and in fact, found the numerous light sensitive orbs radiating strange magic dotting her form to be interestingly exotic. What followed was a passionate affair the likes of which was never before (or since) seen among the abominable godspawn of the Serpent of Life, much to the chagrin of both troglodytes and beholders (who couldn’t unsee what was seen).

    The couple’s happy days came to an end with the advent of mortal life on Material however. The Bitch Queen, kicked out of her father’s realm by the might of giants, came to Water and took her frustrations out on the abominational godspawn of Tiamat. Starting with their oldest sibling Pisaethces the Blood Queen, Umberlee worked her way down the abominable (for the lack of a better term) family tree of deities, bullying the godspawn into submission and converting great numbers of their children into her own worship, which would later become one of the largest follower bases of the planes. Some like Sekolah of Sahuagin put up a good fight and paid for it, others like Merrshaulk of Yuan-ti folded immediately and let her take as many of their children as she wanted, but no abomination could stand up to the savage might of the Bitch Queen (Tiamat, of course, didn’t care so long as her own corner of the plane wasn’t disturbed). Great Mother of Beholders had no intention to fight for her children, Umberlee was welcome to take the entire race of beholders and save her from having to hear their endless prayers. Laogzed, however, wouldn’t let his people be conquered so easily. Having seen what Umberlee does to those who try to oppose her, the Great Mother implored her lover to give up on the troglodyte race but he’d have none of that. So, with great reluctance, she petrified Laogzed and dragged him to Material Plane where they’d both be safe from the Devourer of Fathoms. By the time Laogzed broke free of his stony prison, Umberlee had already converted most troglodytes to her worship (beholders too, not that Great Mother cared).

    Laogzed was furious. Great Mother offered to give him her petrifying eye as penance; thanks to the divinely mirrored nature of abomination races and their godspawn, both Laogzed and his remaining children would gain an eye to see (and shoot petrifying magic) with, whereas beholder race would lose one eye and the petrifying power that so offended Laogzed. It was insulting, this offer did the opposite of pacifying him. So Laogzed the Faceripper attacked her, clawing the skin out of her frontal half and tearing off a number of her eyes, finally earning the moniker he’s known for today. Great Mother had no course but to retaliate then, and (predictably) reduced Laogzed to ash and retook her eyes. She then left him where he fell, for as mournful as she was, this plane was an entirely new place full of things she’d never seen or even imagined before and Great Mother hoped to find something of comparable beauty to her now irrevocably lost love. She did, repeatedly. Material Plane didn’t have nearly the diversity of Water, pretty much every creature of note was the same basic shape with the same basic components, but made up for it by what the natives called geography and atmosphere. Mountains, deserts, coasts, lakes, forests, clouds, storms, suns, moons, stars... The poor critters of Pelor’s make couldn’t perceive absolute beauty even when it literally hit them in the eye. She never did find a new love, even the deities of other planes had a strange, instinctual aversion to her true form; but there was just so much prettiness to look at, she didn’t even miss having a lover (much). And that was before she discovered the strange and wondrous effects of certain strains of mushrooms and plants on the mind, not to mention the neat little thing they call alcohol she learned from Umberlee’s far more personable brother.

    Laogzed healed of course, and went back to Water where, once Umberlee returned to her father’s side, he recovered the majority of troglodytes. But the extremely powerful barrage of magical rays the Great Mother shot into his face had damaged his subcarapace nerve web, severely weakening his (and by extension his people’s) perceptive abilities, leaving them blind to the world beyond a mere few hundred feet. While he still smolders with rage at beholders and their flaky goddess, he recognizes that they’re not remotely equal in power and any fantasies of revenge will never amount to anything. Some beholders have also returned to venerating their Great Mother but most are happy enough worshipping Umberlee (who at least cares about them a little). They blame troglodytes for their maternal abandonment issues however and are somewhat disposed to kill or enslave them (when they can stop staring at various beautiful things long enough).

    The Great Mother of Beholders spends almost all of her time incognito now, usually in a humanoid guise, sampling various drinks and herbal concoctions made by the many many druids and alchemists she’s befriended, and seeing how they affect her perceptions of natural prettiness of the multiverse (aka high as a kite). She’s visited Outer Planes but found the solidified alignment essences that make them up lacking in the complex elemental beauty of real matter of Material Plane, also concluding that outsiders are shallow facsimiles that only seem real to lesser creatures with limited vision. These quite vocal (when she’s got various substances in her, which is virtually always) opinions have gained her the enmity of every single exemplar race and a good deal of deities (who’re also made of pure aligned essence). Her abominable sibling deities aren’t at all happy with her either, they all think she gives them a bad name and ruins their fearsome reputation; they too would love to destroy her. She gets to continue her mostly stoned and hazy existence with a list of terrifying enemies only rivaled by the great goddess of magic Mystra thanks to never leaving Material Plane (and also the immense destructive powers at the tips of her tentacles).

    Great Mother does hear when beholders pray to her from anywhere in the planes, but she ignores them. The only way to get a boon out of her is to be a lucky partier who unwittingly runs into her and impresses her by holding one’s drink/mushroom/weed/misc substances well and being good company. She rewards beautiful mortals (which is all mortals in her eyes) who amuse her by gifting them a beholder eyestalk, complete with beam shooting ability, grafted to wherever they want on their body. On the very rare occasions a beholder finds her, she drops her humanoid facade and reveals her true form to everyone nearby, becoming maternal and warm to her child but still refuses to show them preferential treatment or answer prayers. Questioning her about the feud with Laogzed is about the only thing that can anger Great Mother and, if pressed, might lash out with disasterous consequences for the unwise.



    You know what a troglodyte is? It's not the lameass reptilian humanoid race#17. It's the faceless weird spiky monster you see in Might and Magic. There's lizardfolk, yuan-ti, sarrukh, lamia, even darned kobold got turned away from yippy dogman; why the hell would troglos also be more reptile people? Answer: unimagination and lameness.

    In other news, I'm pretty sure nobody could've expected this one. The term eye tyrant doesn't usually bring party animal to mind. But they got so many eyes, it has to do more than just shoot random rays. So, what are eyes good for? Seeing. And what happens when you see good? This is one possibility. I'm sure there's been at least 10 million beholder-beauty puns over the course of DnD's life but I doubt anyone's gone this far with the basic idea. And it's not all of them, only the big mama is the stoned party girl. Not to mention, beholders' canonic brand of xtreem racism is rather dumb and should've ended with them destroying themselves centuries ago.

    So, instead we got this. It builds on previous stuff as usual but I think it's entertaining and useful. She can actually be used now in a capacity other than generic big monster god, whereas these beholders are slightly more logical than canonic version. There can still be a canonly beholder that hates everything except itself for being fugly too, so I'm sure nothing of great value has been lost with this particular remake.
    (except possibly their newly invented reproduction by dreams, which has to be the most ****ing awesome thing I've heard to come out of 5e, but I've specifically left their breeding habits blank so maybe it still happens here)
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  4. - Top - End - #154
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    So she's a disco ball...

    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

    Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.

    The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.

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  5. - Top - End - #155
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    Founder of the Fanclub of the (Late) Chief of Cliffport Police Department (He shall live forever in our hearts)
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  6. - Top - End - #156
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    Nice, this is wayyyyy more interesting than just generic-evil-beholders with their generic-evil-deity.

    I remember there was a thing in 2e where there were, like, social species of Beholderkin that had hives and the like. Those would have been cool to fit in.

    Also if we're keeping the dream beholders of 5e (I can't find a reference for their reproduction in the monster manual; I'm presuming it's in a splat?) then how would that play into Eldath's domain, esp. considering that she's connected to Umberlee and Tiamat (also, wow, I'm surprised by how far back she is. she's on page 3)? I know the Great Mother doesn't care about worship so this wouldn't be a cause for divine conflict, but beholders worshipping Eldath of all deities in their own way would be amusing.
    Last edited by Beneath; 2017-03-28 at 08:57 PM.

  7. - Top - End - #157
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    Quote Originally Posted by Beneath View Post
    Eldath...she's connected to Umberlee and Tiamat
    That didn't even occur to me. It probably should have. OTOH, nobody knows that so it not being a thing is also justifiable.

    So far we've got: demons, devils, giants, goblins, orcs, gnolls, beholders, mindflayers, liches. What's missing in this list? Oh, right, how could I forget?


    LATHANDER (greater god), Morninglord, Dawnbrother, Rosy Fingered Master, Jubilant Rebirth, Golden Heir, Young Sun, Neverdimmed, Horizon Afire, Solar Son
    Domains: dawn, hope, rebirth, youth, vampirism, angst, guilt

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    It is widely believed that the first vampires were the children of Lady Firehair and Grim Reaper. It’s not like the overbearing mixture of sex and death that permeates everything about these creatures does anything to discredit that idea. But it is wrong, as is the case for most such beliefs (and is a heresy worthy of capital punishment in their churches), for vampires are the fragments of the ancient sun god Amaunator. That is not to say Sune and Nerull aren’t guilty of creating them but it was neither intentional nor a result of any sort of union between such fundamentally incompatible beings.

    Resurrection is tricky business. While any random demigod with two bits of divinity to rub together can raise a newly dead mortal, tracking down a soul shipped off to an afterlife or infinite Outer Plane and then removing the aligned subtype etched on its whole being by the judgement of Mechanus to undo its petitionerhood is beyond the means of all but greater deities. And that’s assuming something isn’t specifically blocking it, such as the Howling. Really, considering all the myriad of things that can befall a mortal soul after modrons are done measuring it, it’s miraculous that any resurrections happen at all. It becomes an even more tenuous proposition when it comes to deities themselves, whose divine souls are straight up annihilated.

    Created out of the astral corpse of the deceased solar deity, the ironically vampiric God of Dawn is what happens when gods meddle in matters beyond their ken. The combined powers of Sune and Nerull was (barely) enough to pull something of Amaunator’s soul out of oblivion and place him into a much smaller part of his corpse, but the rest of his remains shattered into thousands of half spirit things infected with the malignant nihilism of Ruinous Overmother (who doesn’t appreciate being poked) and went on to infest recently dead bodies to spawn the first generation of vampires in the multiverse. These vampires were conduits to the Allmother’s power and, predictably, could spread her corruptive hatred of life. They quickly became a plague that corrupts the tiny bits of Luminous Overmother’s power residing inside every living creature, twisting it into hateful vampiric essence, threatening the balance of power between the Overmothers (if infinitesimally). The Lady of Silver Tears’ answer to this move was the crushing guilt that has been suffocating Lathander ever since; Morninglord, who might as well be an entirely different god without any memories or personality of old Amaunator, combined the powers of three of the eldest deities born of mortal belief and awoke as the vampiric lesser god of dawn and rebirth.

    As a divine vampire, Lathander is incapable of getting any sustenance from belief or worship like true gods and is instead fueled by his lesser “siblings”. Every time a vampire drains the life out of a mortal, a small part of the stolen lifeforce flows to him, each mortal infected with vampirism becomes an extension of his senses and all destroyed vampiric spirits returns to him to be purified and get their vampiric power absorbed, before he sends them off to reincarnate to have another shot at a life untainted by vampirism (instead of the eternal torment in Lower Planes that’d be the certain verdict of Mechanus on almost every vampire if he’d let them go there). Thanks to the sheer number of vampires scattered all over the multiverse, how much they spread and then get destroyed, and how often they have to feed, Rosy Fingered Master has ascended to greater deityhood in less than a millenium.

    As hard as he works to promote hope and happiness or as cheerful as he appears, Lathander is not a hopeful or happy god himself. Dawnbrother labors under the inexplicable, unbearable (and exceedingly ungodlike) guilt, spending most of his time helping mortals find courage to face evil and strength to withstand darkness (when he’s not moping about his sad existence and reading tragic poetry). He preaches of hope and redemption for all, Lathander says kindness and understanding must always be the first course of action and fighting is the last course if evil refuses to see the light and lashes out. He also wants the same dedication to goodness and hope in his followers, who are many and evergrowing even without an organized church or empowered clerics (another thing he can’t have as a vampiric god). The Young Sun encourages cooperation among the forces of good when evil or darkness threatens to rise, using his considerable charm and allure to smooth out any problems that might endanger the innocent, and is well liked by many beings all over the planes. Morninglord feels that the source of his great power mandates him being as benevolent as possible, it’s the price he feels he must pay for his sinful existence forever, without end or pause as long as he lives (even though he’d much prefer to just write sad poetry in darkened rooms).

    As not Amaunator reborn, Lathander has no interest in getting dragged into the ancient feud between elder primordial deities and gods of Material Plane, so goes out of his way to discredit the theory of him being a part of the happy divine family trinity of Material with mommy and daddy that goddess Sune and her church work so hard to establish. This endears him to her chief rival the Sun Father, who’s always glad to see meddlesome Sune lose face. King of Glory, who enjoys all pretty things, and the Emperor of Artifice, who likes the cut of his jib, also like Jubilant Rebirth, further stoking Sune’s anger at her “son” but she’s powerless to openly act against him, for that’d undermine the image of happy divine family she’s trying to build. Nerull isn’t concerned with apperances however, and has become a patron to vampires just to spite his “son”. He doesn’t care that the spread of vampirism only strengthens Lathander and makes him even more likely to oppose Nerull at every opportunity; the great God of Fear knows that, deep down, Lathander’s great fear is his own nature consuming him and works to make that happen (he’d have a higher chance of toppling the primordial elder gods than breaking one of the extremely few verdicts Selune has issued since the Dawn War, not that he knows it).

    Prayers to Lathander don’t do anything; he’s no normal god and can’t hear or answer them. What he can see and hear is everything vampires all over the multiverse see and hear, letting him learn of many evil deeds and plots before they begin. He can even read vampires’ minds and works hard to counter many of the evils they get up to. He warns mortals, coordinates other deities of good and their followers and is usually on an endless crusade against all vampires who do anything more sinister than drain the bare minimum of life from mortals to continue their existence. He would manifest openly too but most deities are against that sort of thing and, as angsty and guilt ridden as he is about his existence, Lathander doesn’t want to be destroyed again.



    As much as I hate on DnD novels, there's good stuff. Like Vampire of the Mists. I haven't remembered that for years and when I did, it resulted in this. I think it speaks for itself and I don't need to explain why it's cool to have Lathander as god of vampires.
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  8. - Top - End - #158
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    Sune the crimson haired goddess of sluts. This is why i like ishtar and morrigan when they love they love good and when they fight they fight deadly
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    Lathander the vampire god. Nice.

    It is known that Eldath is a goddess of dreams, though? Which would give room for something with beholders if they like dreams. Even if it's a weak connection.

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    Spoiler: An outwardly jolly god of the sun who secretly has crippling depression?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pronounceable View Post
    As hard as he works to promote hope and happiness or as cheerful as he appears


    Quote Originally Posted by Pronounceable View Post
    Dawnbrother labors under the inexplicable, unbearable (and exceedingly ungodlike) guilt, spending most of his time helping mortals find courage to face evil and strength to withstand darkness


    Quote Originally Posted by Pronounceable View Post
    The Young Sun encourages cooperation among the forces of good when evil or darkness threatens to rise, using his considerable charm and allure to smooth out any problems that might endanger the innocent, and is well liked by many beings all over the planes.


    Pronounceable, have you been playing Dark Souls recently, by any chance?
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    Spoiler: Collection of Signature Quotes
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  11. - Top - End - #161
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    Exclamation Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    Quote Originally Posted by Fable Wright View Post
    spoiler

    I knew it was vaguely familiar.
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  12. - Top - End - #162
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    I'm gonna post this even though I'm not sure it's all that good or particularly useful. This has been in the oven for far too long and it might be burned now, I had at least 5 different ideas for this and none of them were particularly writeworthy.


    PISAETHCES (artificial pseudodeity), Blood Queen, First Abomination, Mind Over Multiverse, Zenith of the Depths, the Psicloud, Daughter of Disdain, Abolethic Sovereignty
    Domains: intelligence, psionics, disdain, aboleths

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    The Lord of All Magic is smart, as befits the incarnation of intelligence itself. Much in the same way Nerull embodies the existential fear and Sune embodies the reproductive imperative, Boccob is the coalesced manifestation of the concept of intelligence as envisioned by mortals of Material Plane. Everyone knows Boccob isn’t just a genius but is the smartest being in all of the planes, as he’s likely to mention occasionally.

    Like most things “everyone knows”, it is wrong. For the concept of intelligence is far older than mortals and isn’t nearly as anthromorphic as they think. Born fully formed from the brow of the Mother of All Abominations, Pisaethces the Blood Queen was a primordial being, the first one of the second generation of the multiverse’s deities and the ultimate manifestation of the concept of intellect. The idiotic, pointless and ceaseless bickering between the sons of Overmothers in their tiny shelter during the uncounted ages of the Dawn War was enough to erode even the sturdiest of minds and forced their eldest sister to turn to the most reasonable being at hand for company (herself). Having inherited an infinitesimal bit of her mothers’ creativity, one day the Mother of All Abominations’s inner monologue suddenly started to talk back. Like a tumor made of disdain and spite, this new and vicious personality grew larger inside Tiamat’s mind until she became a completely distinct being from the Serpent of Life. Pisaethces, as the new mind started to call herself, was fueled by Tiamat’s hatred of her brothers’ stupidity and desire for intelligent company. The two spent the remaining ages of the Dawn War in happy mental discourse, completely tuning out whatever dumb crap their younger brothers were wasting their breaths on, thinking up ever more strange and hosed up lifeforms and their potentially pitiful struggles to amuse themselves with imaginary schadenfreude.

    And then the danger was passed; the Overmothers’ battle was over and Tiamat was free to get out and not hear her brothers’ obnoxious voices ever again. Leaving them a dire warning to never bother her for all eternity, she went and settled in the Elemental Plane of Water where she could finally start making the millions of ideas she’d had with her imaginary friend and/or split personality about various creatures into a reality. Pisaethces then sprung from her brow almost immediately, fully formed with the smartest and strongest mind to ever exist, ready and eager to help her mother create the aforementioned pitiful creatures for their entertainment. While Tiamat was at first pleased to have this intelligent an assistant, she soon found that Pisaethces was far smarter than her. Any idea or thought Tiamat had, Pisaethces had one better. Any creature Tiamat made plans for, Pisaethces could dramatically improve in design. It was obvious that Tiamat would be nothing but the dumb muscle in this arrangement, just doing what her smarter daughter told her to do. While Pisaethces was neither smug nor overbearing about it, her serpentine mother didn’t want to be the lesser partner in any endeavor. So she told her Firstspawn to design the perfect species instead of the weirdly fubar creatures they were planning on.

    Carefully designed by the smartest being, the aboleths were to be flawless creatures; self reproducing, able to survive in any environment and connected by a racial mental bond to ensure perfect communication and cooperation among themselves, whatever civilization they’d erect could never be surpassed by any other creature for all eternity. They even came with immense psionic powers to ensure various immortal creatures of the multiverse (such as the native marids of the plane who were getting antsy about these tresspassing deities) couldn’t subjugate them. Tiamat was satisfied with the flawlessness of the design and, instead of spawning a brand new species from it, she shattered her daughter’s mind and soul into thousands of pieces and fashioned the spiritual amalgamation out of her that’d be the source of aboleth souls in the future. The Serpent of Life would discard all of her daughter’s schematics and blueprints (designed for maximally fubar critters and schadenfreude) and start from scratch, beginning her Mother of All Abominationsness with simple things like various weeds and planktons, iterating and improving her designs by herself without anyone telling her what to do. The resulting aquatic abominations of today’s multiverse are, while certainly strange and terrible, nowhere near as realitybreakingly lovecraftian as Daugher of Disdain’s original designs.

    Kicked out of Tiamat’s realm to sink or swim on their own, it didn’t take that long for aboleths to recognize their souls were all pieces of a hidden and broken divinity reincarnating over and over. Not liking the idea of losing their identities after each death, they built a massive psionic construct linked to minds of every living aboleth. It’s a testament to the massive power of aboleths that even now, after uncountable millenia, the Psicloud they created still records all memories of each aboleth continuously until they physically die, then rewrites the recorded personality onto the soul when it eventually reincarnates. Thanks to this cloudsaving, aboleths have attained virtual immortality; each individual aboleth has memories stretching back all the way to primordial times. Aboleths are unique among the abominations of Water in having nothing but disdain at the idea of worshipping anything (due to not being designed by the Serpent of Life) but the great importance they place on their psionic construct nevertheless empowered it (like the way it would happen to all deities of other abomination races), granting it a measure of divinity. In an effort to prevent this exact scenario, Tiamat had hidden remains of her shattered daughter in the Plane of Imprisonment. Tartarus should have kept her pieces contained and seperated forever, with no hope of ever reassembling outside but the Mother of All Abominations had underestimated the intelligence and strength she’d given to aboleths. Their psionic mastery had established an unbreakable connection between Elemental Plane of Water and Tartarus when they built the Psicloud, which Soul Forger Moradin would have to transform into River Styx to prevent it from flooding the multiverse during the formation of the Great Wheel of Planescape. The great similarity between the two liquid planes caused a strange and unexpected resonance even before that, amplified by the odd mix of divinity and psionics of the Psicloud, creating a rather subtle planar catastrophe that corrupted both sides of the connection. It bound all the fiends of Tartarus mentally like aboleths, creating the now infamous Tarterian Collective, while the vile blood red sludge of the Lower Plane seeped into the aboleths’ souls and made them incapable of living without constantly secreting a horrific and corruptive mucus from their bodies.

    Afterwards, the artificial pseudodeity of aboleths quickly gained a sort of sentience and started resembling Zenith of the Depths in manners, probably helped by the extremely similar personalities of the annihilated goddess and the demodands of Tartarus. Being a completely psionic being long seperated from the broken mass of divinity sealed in Tartarus, Pisaethces doesn’t physically exist but can manifest as a gigantic aboleth with a bloody red miasma surrounding her wherever she wishes. Using her immense mastery over psionics, she’s able to “interact” with any sentient creature as if she has a physical form and nothing, not even greater deities can recognize that the “Firstspawn of Tiamat” is but a psionic illusion. She also counts as a manifestation of the concept of intelligence just like the original and is able to feed on sentience itself to a degree; this lets her leech power off of not just other deities of intelligent pursuits, but off of every sentient creature as well. While her covert psionic leeching is nowhere near the level of power regular deities derive from regular worship, Blood Queen’s power base is practically whole of the multiverse. She gains particularly great power from everything the Lord of All Magic and all his various assistant deities do, which slightly amuses her.

    Pisaethces’s goal is to gather ever more knowledge until she attains omniscience. She knows this can’t be done with passive observation and so has turned her attention to ultracomplicated cosmic experiments absolutely nobody else can understand. Aboleths are very unlikely to be obedient, even to their pseudogoddess, so have been left mostly to their own devices with just a suggestion that they should have intellectual and civil pursuits. They can usually be found on Material puppetteering large numbers of mortals for no discernable gain. Tainted as they are by Tarterian influences, most aboleths are sadistic creatures that enjoy playing god to “lesser” creatures, manipulating thoughts and emotions of mortals to make them act out a specific sequence of events they want to watch. A few that deign to openly communicate with mortals fancy themselves artists, claiming they’re crafting dramatic stories out of the meaningless and drab lives of mortals, giving them something impactful to do with their brief existence. Others claim the wars or catastrophies they spark are experiments to advance social sciences and mold the targeted societies for the better. Yet others say they simply have nothing better to do with their endless lives but mess with mortals. Since all aboleths are in constant contact with every member of their race, many people suspect they’re actually engineering some sort of grand cosmic event disguised as petty sadism but so far none have found any larger pattern in the aboleth plots spread across the multiverse (not that it’s easy to even recognize one). There’s no end to the conspiracy theories that see aboleths under every stone and, thanks to the massive range of their psionic reach, it’s impossible to conclusively prove that an aboleth did not cause any given problem.



    Kind of unnecessary for a single useful plot idea, a (rather toothless) critter rewrite and a bunch of ancient history stuff nobody needs. And it also ties to Tartarus once again. I think I'm overcluttering it like regular DnD does with demon-devil stuff but there were far too many parallels not to. Ocean plane, psionics, evil, disgusting mucus. I started writing it a while ago, hoping it'd get somewhere, then it did. It just doesn't seem very interesting or usable. Then again, I didn't particularly like City of Brass stuff above yet been told it's actually good. Also, it's seriously weird, look at her classification. I like weird.

    Also also, somewhere abovethread Beneath had said Erathis was supposed to be offbrand Athena. Didn't see it then, still don't see it. This, right here, is an offbrand Athena (in very rough form), which is like half the reason I'm posting a thing I'm so unsure about. Gotta show those 4e writers how it's done (prolly fails at that tho). The other half is I've written it all, so might as well post.

    Also also also, I finally have an idea about Shadowfell. It's a great idea. I know it's great because it's stolen.
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    I think it was the 5e DMG saying she was supposed to be off-brand Athena.

    This, though. Aboleth Athena. Nifty. Your aboleths have a species hive-mind too, on top of their memories spanning back to the dawn of time? That's certainly gonna be interesting to try to oppose.

    That aboleths are manipulating mortal societies on every level to conduct experiments on things known only to them puts them in contact with people in an interesting and useful way. Though "they're playing a long game on a level so high above you that it would take your entire lifetime to gather the necessary background info to comprehend their motives" always seems like a cop-out to write.

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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    Quote Originally Posted by Beneath View Post
    Though "they're playing a long game on a level so high above you that it would take your entire lifetime to gather the necessary background info to comprehend their motives" always seems like a cop-out to write.
    You and I read that very differently. They're constantly connected, sharing information, with undercurrents of deep misanthropy and multiversal hatred, have literally all the time in the world to **** around, and are basically untouchable by any form of censoring action due to their anonymity reincarnation.

    They are almost literally "/b/ plays multiplayer Crusader Kings", with all the horribleness that implies.

    While their true motives, end-game, means, and ends are nigh-indecipherable, they can be aptly approximated as 'for the shiggles' and you've got a pretty good idea of what you're opposing and how much **** you're going to have to put up with now.
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    That makes sense as a motivation, yes. They may be doing the incomprehensible in the long term, but in the short term they're faffing around trying to one-up eachother in nasty messes and held back only by the fact that a nasty mess made of eachother's plans is as much a nasty mess as one made of mortal lives (but even when they foil eachother, it isn't subtle because they're doing it for the sake of creating the lulziest train wreck possible. so you and everyone you love are just as likely to be caught up in an aboleth's impulsive stomping of another aboleth's sandcastle as they are in an aboleth's scheme in the first place)

    Though that might be a bit more /b/ than the-aboleth-collective-as-written.

    Also:
    Aboleth 1: Help! Adventurers are taking over the society I'm turning into an art project orgy of depravity!
    Aboleth 2: /piscaethces/ is not your personal army

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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    While both ideas have upsides and I kinda want to leave the exact motives of aboleths to DM here, I imagined them more of /abom/ than mad sociologists (mostly thanks to Tartarus connection, who're straight up /b/). However
    Quote Originally Posted by Beneath View Post
    Aboleth 1: Help! Adventurers are taking over the society I'm turning into an art project orgy of depravity!
    Aboleth 2: /piscaethces/ is not your personal army
    is now canon.

    In other news, here's my great idea. You can tell it's great because it's utterly stolen.


    LENDOR (greater god), Infinite Sentry, the Unborn, Heir of Ruin, Lord of Shadows of the Fallen, Pathetic’s Last Refuge, Second Son
    Domains: infinity, omniscience, prophecy, paradox

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    Nothing that exists can truly be unmade unless the Overmothers themselves forget it. Which will of course happen at never, as both of them have infinitely perfect memories. And it’s these unforgotten memories that form the quasiplane of Shadowfell beyond the confines of the regular multiverse.

    As might be expected from the name, Shadowfell is the shadow of the multiverse that falls on the Yawning Void Below (aka Plane of Negative Energy aka Shar). The planes might be infinite but they aren’t infinite enough to absorb the radiant divinity Luminous Overmother emanates from above, so the portion of Her holy light that doesn’t become new souls for mortals and immortals of the multiverse can reach all the way to the void at the bottom of all. Ruinous power of the Allmother reacts to that and the mixing of their omnipotencies create the unreal quasiplane that is the shadowy domain/cradle/coffin of their second son. Lendor the Unborn’s existence was prophesized and preemptively erased by Shar before she gave birth to him and it’s only the Allmother’s subsequent sundering of time to free herself from the bondage of her own omniscience that allowed Selune to retcon Lendor back to existence. As a result of his paradoxical origin (that could’ve been called timey wimey if such a term existed), Lendor is a primordial elder god with true omniscience like his mothers and elder brother, yet he’s completely incapable of action. All he can do is think and remember all of Shar’s past victims/victories as the Heir of Ruin so that the Allmother’s own mind won’t be cluttered with useless and potentially dangerous information (for remembering previous wins had the possibility of making her feel the tiniest bits of satisfaction or pride some day; unacceptable). And Lendor’s involuntary rememberance of these annihilated things and beings fill up his quasiplane with their echoes, letting them continue to exist in some small capacity, which pleases Selune. Lord of Shadows of the Fallen would be worthy of pity, if pitying an almost infinitely powerful yet mindless deity made any sense.

    As the mindscape of a mindless deity, Shadowfell isn’t a real plane and can’t be reached by normal means (yet still exists, hence quasiplane). It’s filled with things long destroyed and forgotten, ghosts of peoples and cities and lands and worlds all jumbled together into an illogical mess of their entire (unremembered) histories overlapping. It’s possible to find thousands of copies of a building that was annihilated by time and entropy in the real multiverse, each one an exact replica of a state it had for a single moment of its existence. Neither time nor space has much meaning in the quasiplane, where two of echoes of the same army seperated by a few minutes might be fighting each other to be the first to besiege a city that their real selves besieged during their existence, heedless to the fact that there could be twenty more copies of that city within sight. It’s not at all unusual to see a city whose sections randomly fast forward and rewind themselves between a majestic bastion of civilization and a burnt out husk, or a group of cheerful travellers suddenly attacked by what seems like shambling undead monstrosities created out of the exact same people and getting devoured alive.

    These fellshadows, as such echoes of annihilated and forgotten beings and items and places are called, are completely perfect copies of utterly destroyed things that nobody in the real multiverse remembers anymore. Incapable of understanding or acknowledging their state, a fellshadow of a creature acts exactly the same as the real creature would’ve acted at whatever moment of their life the fellshadow is an echo of. It must be stressed that they’re not the real thing however, as the real version must’ve been annihilated body and soul and completely forgotten in the real planes for a fellshadow to even exist. Fellshadows are sad and pitiful things, things so irrelevant and long forgotten that even Ruinous Overmother doesn’t bother to waste her (infinite) hatred on them anymore. Many fellshadows attack and kill younger or older copies of themselves or their loved ones (whose apparent ages don’t seem right to them), thinking these imposters or dopplegangers. And since the same or related things’ fellshadows appear near each other on a very regular basis, most fellshadows of sentient beings go mad before long. Fellshadows of places or items can be even more dangerous, as without a facsimile of a mind to stabilize their form, they can switch the moment they’re echoing unexpectedly. A fellshadow of a sword can suddenly turn into a pile of rusty scraps or a lump of molten metal, or a sturdy building might suddenly collapse or burn down (or be struck with lightning or swallowed by earthquake or disintegrated with magic or...).

    The only way to enter or exit Shadowfell is through the “fellfires” that randomly form between it and Material Plane. These strange things look like large bonfires with a heatless, silver colored flame burning without any fuel and it’s possible to walk right into them to cross to and from Shadowfell. For unknown reasons, these passages don’t appear on any other plane despite the fact that fellshadow outsiders and elementals (and in one case an actual deity) also exist. They’re completely indestructible from Material and burn for quite some time until they randomly fade away, the only way to put out a fellfire is to do it from Shadowfell (where it goes off as easily as a normal fire) and, of course, get stuck there. As time doesn’t flow normally, it’s completely impossible to tell how long any trip into Shadowfell takes in the real multiverse; what seems like months or years might be a few seconds outside and what feels like a minute might be a millenia, but at least it’s not timeless like Astral, so it’s not a guaranteed death sentence.

    As sad and pitiful as they are, fellshadows are excessively dangerous outside Shadowfell. A fellshadow item or person can be killed or destroyed without any extra effort inside the quasiplane (and there’ll be many other new copies of it soon enough) but should any fellshadow come out into the real planes, they’ll start to reform/reset/repair/heal to their original state whenever they’re badly damaged. Backed by the power of the Overmothers’ unknown second son, fellshadows are virtually impossible to harm due to their unreality. This makes fellshadow items extremely valuable, and fellshadow beings even more extremely dangerous. While a maddened fellshadow of a human will still be just as killable as a real human, it’ll keep coming back forever unless it can dragged back into Shadowfell and destroyed there. Similarly, a fellshadow item will never be worn or broken or exhausted for long; a simple bottle of water from the quasiplane becomes an endless water source outside and a fellshadow weapon will be superior to any real one. Luckily for all real beings, fellshadows are very easily identified in the real multiverse; they’re completely colorless things that look wrong and defy all laws of optics. A fellshadow looks the same in broad daylight or pitch black darkness, resembling a pencil sketch somehow come to life. It’s an unnerving sight and even many adventurers who’re used to seeing them inside Shadowfell (where they look like pale but normal things) get easily creeped out when meeting them as two dimensional things that can somehow exist in reality (because cartoons haven’t been invented on most parts of the multiverse).

    The Second Son himself doesn’t really do anything, for he’s a mindless deity that’s little more than a diary for his mothers. But there are still some mad cultists who’s learned of his existence and worship him in hopes of getting infinite knowledge, because of course there are. The lucky ones get diddly squat. The unlucky ones get taken in by cultists of the First Son and usually end up praying to the Allmother for salvation.



    The previous one was a fluke, a coincidence. This is what happened when I get inspiration from Dark Souls. Since good artists copy great artists steal, you always make great art when you steal, right? Right?

    Anyway, I thought something should be done with the words in Shadowfell in a cosmological sense, so I did just that. And then if the theme fits, you must acquit (and therefore steal from the most appropriate source). I wonder if anyone else has done a similar thing. The parallels are so obvious in hindsight.
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    Default Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods

    So if the 3.5e Tome of Magic is in play, this is where vestiges come from, then? Very nifty, and interesting to do something with the place other than make it a formless void.

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    I like this version of Waukeen's backstory. Would fit well in 4E where gods like Moradin and Corellan are less tied to species - more "gods who happen to be the most popular gods of dwarves and elves"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pronounceable View Post
    The previous one was a fluke, a coincidence. This is what happened when I get inspiration from Dark Souls. Since good artists copy great artists steal, you always make great art when you steal, right? Right?
    Stealing involves taking the concepts and making them your own. Copying is when you take something and it remains recognizable as coming from its original source. I am sorry, but this was not stealing.

    I dunno, Lendor just seems... bland? He has no personality, agency, or anything, and the discussion of fellshadows made it pretty clear what they were at the start, and it took more words to develop them than what was required. Pruning the entry, adding some character to who fellshadows generally are (like, what do they tend to do on the material, other than being immortal?), and possibly linking them with some indirect agency that Lendor has would probably have strengthened the entry substantially to stand on its own merits, as opposed to relying on one concept heavily.

    Not trying to criticize; most of the work here is good and thought-provoking. Just hoping to give constructive criticism.
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    Hey thread, we're back.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fable Wright View Post
    I am sorry, but this was not stealing.
    The only thing missing up there was an estus flask and \o/ praising \o/. I don't see how it's not enough to be stealy.

    needs editing
    True. Everything in here could use more editing. Alas I don't have an editor. And Lendor himself is indeed boring, just an excuse to wax poetic about actually good stuff, like others before him.
    Also, crits are cool, I'd want even more critting.

    this is where vestiges come from, then?
    I seriously considered renaming them to vestiges after you said it. That's a much less forced name than "fellshadow" but there's something amusingly dumb in this name, so I'm keeping it for now. But we can totes call these things vestiges, it's good and proper.


    So here's today's thingy. Been at this for a long while too, kinda scattered and incoherent, but has real bits of cool in it. Time for another couple of MM rewrites!


    Eachthighern (lesser archfey), Lord of Horses, Master of All That Is Equine, One Winged Horse
    Domains: purity, loyalty, obedience, unicorns, pegasi

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    Parents of little girls have much to be troubled about but almost none of them is alarming as the demand for a pony. For the talk of ponies (or horses or other equine animals) might indicate that the little girl in question has been targeted by the most terrible and creepy of the inhabitants of Feywild: the unicorn. Nurturing a deadly obsession with female humanoid (and only female humanoid) virginity, the unicorns are the biggest *******s known to mortals to hail from the fey realms and have a distressing habit of “adopting” little prepubescent girls. The equine fey beasts hide in the fringes of mortal societies and use their telepathic powers on their chosen little girl to talk to her without anyone noticing and pretend to be an invisible friend and playmate. They have an uncanny ability to befriend children and are great at amusing and entertaining even the most surly and sour of kids. A little girl thus adopted by a unicorn will inevitably come to regard it as her best friend and possibly the most important “person” in her life. And once they have their empathic bond firmly established, the unicorn will start to tell its chosen charge about the virtues of purity and innocence and loyalty to mold her personality into its liking, becoming like a secret parental figure that’s even more influential than the real ones.

    Unicorns are, for all their creepy *******ry, rather cunning and usually pick daughters of troubled families who’re unhappy by default and unlikely to have their inexplicable pony or horse obsession be identified as noteworthy until too late. Which is usually the start of adolescence when, at the urging of the unicorn, the girl runs away from home to finally be with her invisible friend. The ceaseless whispers of the unicorn in their ears since their formative years see these children grow up to become puritanical and judgemental pricks with a deep seated love for animals and nature and an even deeper seated hatred of their fellow men (and women too). After being taken in by the unicorn, it’s almost always too late to save the teen girl who’s likely already a massive douchebag as the fey beast raised her to be (the psychological or psychiatric sciences required to unscrew such trauma aren’t particularly advanced among mortals, though blunt application of mental magic of various kinds is always possible with the usual terrible risks). The one hole in the unicorn’s otherwise expertly weaved mental snare is its strange sense of pride; they have a compulsion to make their victims incessantly talk to their friends and families about a desire to have horses and/or horselike animals (like the aforementioned ponies). This allows knowledgeable individuals to recognize the grave danger the child is in and maybe do something about it (such as getting the damn unicorn found and killed to sever the mental connection).

    Of course, the grave danger of the unicorn isn’t merely transforming a regular little girl into a prudish prick (as some parents already do it themselves); it’s their obsession with purity and innocence (which pretty much just means virginity) and their violent response to defiance. Not only will a runaway unicorn victim likely never be found again, but if she starts to long for nonunicorn company or feels even the tiniest bit of romantic or sexual interest in any fellow humanoid (which is practically guaranteed to happen to an adolescent girl at some point), she’s being “sullied” in the beast’s eyes. This prompts the unicorn to physically abuse her (another thing they’re surprisingly good at) to purge her of sinful urges with purifying pain and protect her from the vile nature of mortality. Their rough treatment gets more and more severe if the girl fails to discard her unacceptable thoughts to the fey’s satisfaction and might end with her getting maimed or killed (either of which is better than not being a virgin far as the fey cares). Should its charge “betray” the unicorn by rejecting it and fleeing from such treatment, the fey beast will do everything it can to make her pay by becoming a telepathic stalker that’ll mentally harass her for the rest of her life, driving her to insanity and suicide if it’s not found and eliminated.

    Any mortal girl taken in by a unicorn that manages to embrace its attitude and grow up to adulthood without getting maimed or murdered gets bonded with her unicorn. The Mark of Eachthighern appears as a unicorn tattoo in the middle of her forehead, as the bonded unicorn sheds its material body and inhabits the mortal as a second soul, becoming a magical familiar that acts as a mount when summoned. Having gained a myriad of feylike powers, the newly attuned unicorn knight is then free to roam the world, righting wrongs and fighting evils however she sees fit as a paragon of virtue who cannot possibly be wrong as long as she stays pure (aka virginal). Oddly enough, these bloodthirsty, sanctimonious and ultra judgemental knights of Eachthighern tend to leave lots more dead women than men in their wake, deemed not pure or innocent enough to warrant saving. Unicorn Knights are pretty much universally reviled by mortals for, if nothing else, their holier than thou attitude and tend to get killed relatively quickly. The few that manage to live long and grow older and stronger simply disappear into Feywild, heeding the call of their equine master, and are never seen again in the mortal world. As such, it’s vitally important for parents of little girls to be on alert against talk of horses and ponies, for the only way to save a unicorn victim is early detection.

    The somewhat obscure name of Eachthighern is also related to the other type of terrible horselike fey beast that serves the Master of All That Is Equine: the pegasi. The winged, feathery horses and their savage obsession with bloodletting is an even bigger menace to mortals than unicorns and the fey insanity of a pegasus manifests as an unstoppable craving to see something bleed. Bloodthirst of pegasi is well known and they tend to savagely attack any creature they encounter just to watch them bleed out if they haven’t seen any blood for a few hours. Luckily, almost all pegasi are busy fighting the forces of Skerrit the Forester, the feylord of centaurs, and leave worlds of mortals mostly alone. The War of Thundering Hooves has been going on in Feywild for millenia by now, sparked by the centaurs’ rebellion against the weakened Eachthighern after Titania ripped one of his wings off and broke his horn after he insulted her one too many times. Empowered by Oberon the Lord of Winds and Brambles (who was also sick of Eachthighern’s minions’ constant killing of the members of his nymph harem), the centaur warchief Skerrit was promoted to a feylord and has been occupying both unicorns and pegasi in Feywild ever since, letting the rest of the Summer Court fey to frolick and cavort in (relative) peace.

    Being an archfey, Eachthighern himself was in little danger from centaurs or their jumped up lord but his equine subjects were missing something vitally important in warfare: opposable thumbs. Landbound as they were, the centaurs were still able to frequently defeat pegasi thanks to their handheld tools and ranged weaponry, leaving Eachthighern in a strategically bad spot. The infamous phenomenon known to mortals as unicorn knighthood was his solution to this problem and today, the War of Thundering Hooves is where the surviving mortal targets of unicorns end up in. While he’s sometimes known to field them against centaurs, Lord of Horses prefers to keep these precious few mortal women in his thrall hidden in enclaves where they’ll work with those handy hands of theirs to produce arms and armor for his hoofy armies. The specially constructed horse armors and various alchemical items designed to be usable with equine mouths gave the pegasi and unicorns the edge needed to turn the tide against centaurs and Skerrit’s forces have been on the losing side of clashes lately.

    Unlike his one horned recruiters, One Winged Horse doesn’t have the time or inclination to personally and closely get to know his mortal servants and instead just telepathically floods their minds with bliss and/or dread to keep them obedient and productive. He’s much too busy trying to wrest the control of Feywild to avenge his humiliation at the hands of the Queen of Waves and Flames but his elemental power is no match for the greater archfey and all the thunderstorms and floods and fires and earthquakes and hurricanes he tries to throw at Summer Court reflect back upon his realm, devastating his own subjects. Equestria (as it’s called) is one of the most dangerous regions of Feywild due to sudden and unpredictable natural disasters ravaging it, even above and beyond the Deathfreeze of Queen Auril.

    Eachthighern is seen as an insignificant creep and is mostly ignored by the multiverse at large; which is just as well, for the one time he got any extraplanar attention was from Demogorgon, who thought it’d be amusing to pop some unicorns’ cherries after seeing how furious they got when a mortal woman one had bonded lost her virginity (a trifling detail like unicorns physically not having any required bits for it didn’t stop the mad Abyssal prince). Thus the corrupted equine fey/fiend beasts known as nightmares were somehow created out of unicorn spirits and proliferated in the Lower Planes, which taught Master of All That Is Equine that his moniker wasn’t actually warranted (and also that outsider attention was bad). A few sanctimonious mortal cults to him has spawned here and there, usually headed by a vestal unicorn knight, venerating unicorns as symbols of purity and innocence. These inevitably become a front to some fiendish agenda or another after its leader is gone due to Lord of Horses’ deliberate lack of interest in things beyond his vendettas in Feywild.

    Unicorns and pegasi are almost universally considered to be dangerous monsters and killed on sight. Unlike his much stronger evil siblings the Queen of Winter and the Prince of Spring, archfey Eachthighern gets no respect or fear from mortals, only disgust and contempt, which prevents him from attaining to divinity by whatever method ascendant archfey have used (at least according to the sages).



    In short, screw unicorns. Never liked them at all and Sparklelord didn't help either. Not quite reaches the level of hatred for Mystra or dragons, but it goes up there when you think about all the real world creep crap behind the one horned horse.

    And the original pegasus is a beast born of blood (from decapitation to be exact), why the flak would they be friendly disney talking animals in DnD? Fey creatures should never be cute and pettable woodland critters, no matter how hard modern media tries to clean off old legends.

    Also bit of retconning to the big archfey to make them even more seasonal, this lets there be as many lesser archfey as DM wants. Lord of Depths and Darkness, Queen of Waves and Flames, Lord of Winds and Brambles and last but not least Queen of Air and Darkness. Since spring was exiled for being a **** and autumn is too busy orgying with nymphs, only the two queens have courts and large followings of multiple fey varieties.

    Overall, I'm gonna assume there's a bunch of useful Feywild worldbuildery here. You get the seasonal big archfey, their lesser archfey like Horsey and also random tiny lords up the wazoo. It should be a lively place by now.
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    Oh hey, the thread's moving again.

    I love this take on unicorns (they certainly should be monsters. Even if you keep the "chaotic good protector of the forest"). Pegasi I'm not so sure of but making them good-aligned and easy to make into mounts wasn't a good choice for D&D; I'm just not sure "they'll kick your head open just 'cause they haven't seen any blood spilled in the last few hours" is the best way to do it (though it's certainly a way). Mythologically, I do think pegasi fit as mounts (Beleriphon rode the original), but they shouldn't be, like, either intelligent creatures in search of a rider (at least not you) or basically domesticated.

    Basically they need to be more like griffons (side-note: I once had this idea for a series of tiers of Griffons with progressively weirder spellings. So it'd start "Griffin" and then the next one up might be "Gryphon" and the last one would be "Ghryphphynne" or something). Also, did D&D drop the "out of everything in the world, the thing griffons most like to eat is horses" thing after 2e? I remember that distinctly but I don't think I've seen it mentioned in 3e or post-3e D&D.

    Anyway. I'm already getting ideas for how I'd run an adventure with a unicorn knight. Thanks for that.

  22. - Top - End - #172
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pronounceable View Post
    Nurturing a deadly obsession with female humanoid (and only female humanoid) virginity, the unicorns are the biggest *******s known to mortals to hail from the fey realms and have a distressing habit of “adopting” little prepubescent girls.
    Checks out.

    Quote Originally Posted by Pronounceable View Post
    Unicorns and pegasi are almost universally considered to be dangerous monsters and killed on sight.
    But then how do cults of unicorn knights ever get a foothold? Why do upper-class families not immediately see it as a warning sign? This kind of reveal only works if they're associated with good things in-universe, otherwise the whole thing usually falls apart. I might change it to most people recognizing unicorn propaganda and keeping the associations with 'purity', but with warning myths among those who live by the woods about the dangers of pony obsession that don't usually reach the upper class due to these things just being superstitions of the lowly commoners. The upper-class veneer and snootiness of unicorn knights, as they are from noble families, propagate unicorn myths among the upper class and cause them to trickle down to the commoners, maintaining the status quo.

    Quote Originally Posted by Pronounceable View Post
    And the original pegasus is a beast born of blood (from decapitation to be exact), why the flak would they be friendly disney talking animals in DnD? Fey creatures should never be cute and pettable woodland critters, no matter how hard modern media tries to clean off old legends.
    ...You realize, of course, that the change only made them more approachable to your standard murderhobos, right?

    Murderhobo: "Magical flying horse, I want your help. I wish to go slaughter dozens of sentient monsters and collect their loot so I can buy better equipment to repeat this process."
    Normal pegasus: "Dude, no, you need help. No way you're getting on my back."
    This pegasus: "Blood for the unicorn god! Skulls for medusa's throne! I'm in."

    Murderhobo: "Guys, I just slaughtered all the cats and dogs and mice in the area, and I got like 32 xp for it!"
    Normal pegasus: "Nope nope nope I'm out."
    This pegasus: "Ooh, seems like fun!"
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    I'm not seeing that unicorns necessarily only/primarily target daughters of the upper classes there? The thing I'm seeing about who they target is

    Unicorns are, for all their creepy *******ry, rather cunning and usually pick daughters of troubled families who’re unhappy by default and unlikely to have their inexplicable pony or horse obsession be identified as noteworthy until too late.
    Not a reference to class; just neglect.

    The vision I'm seeing of unicorn knights doesn't run in high society, or any society, for very long at all, considering that they're warped into a fundamentally inhuman mindset

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    Quote Originally Posted by Beneath View Post
    I'm not seeing that unicorns necessarily only/primarily target daughters of the upper classes there? The thing I'm seeing about who they target is
    The fact that they're called knights suggests a traditionally wealthy background beyond the means of peasants.

    Quote Originally Posted by Beneath View Post
    The vision I'm seeing of unicorn knights doesn't run in high society, or any society, for very long at all, considering that they're warped into a fundamentally inhuman mindset
    Which is why I feel that they only succeed in high society, if at all; there, your assets and your family matter far more than your origins, religious views, fundamental dissociations with reality, bizarre habits, and demon god(s) living in your head. If you've got coin and/or the adventurer class levels to raze small kingdoms, then you're in, no matter how negative your sanity level has gotten.
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    I think they are called unicorn knigths simply as a way to give them a title (And because of the unicorns' vanity), not because of high birth. The fact that in the end they are mostly used for manual labor seems to support this. Besides, certain societies might see a young girl of the community being chosen by an unicorn as a good omen. After all, while obnoxious, their crusade against what they consider impure might get them to fight the enemies of communities that consider virginity as holy as they do (And there have been historical cultures that did see female virginity that way, so it could happen).

    The way they sustain the whole business of taking away girls seems to be that all these posts are written from the perspective of entities that operate on an infinite (or at the very least, if finite, large enough as to be effectively limitless to its denizens) multiverse, so while there might be a very big number of unicorn knights, there might be little more than a handful coming from a certain world.

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    The way I see unicorn knighthood is that any "knighthood" is more like being a knight-errant knighted by a supernatural creature from outside your society than like, a knighthood enmeshed in a system of feudal obligations, with the goal of alienating everyone the knight ever knew so hard that she won't be missed when she gets taken into faerie slavery. Maybe she's told stories of faerie courts where she'll serve as a traditional knight would, if she proves herself worthy (these are lies). Anything where she maintains any kind of human relationship, even with, say, servants, is something the unicorn would discourage as it means there's someone who might miss her. Maybe she'll get assigned brownies or something to maintain the image of a knight in shining armor (someone's gotta polish that), or taught to cast Prestidigitation.

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    Maybe I should've commented a bit more about knight stuff but I like having many posts not of my own. It makes the place look alive.

    Anyway, the average unicorn knight is a magical girl on a magical horse with magical powers appearing out of nowhere and talking up purity and virtue. Your average peasant might like that, especially the ultrarightist Chauntean lot. Whatever she used to be among mortals isn't important at that point, tho no reason to not be nobility.

    Onwards to our latest contender: there's no end to the strange DnDisms you can notice, is there?


    GHAUNADAUR (divinity), Elder Seep, That Which Lurks, the Vile, Cosmic Diarrhea
    Domains: excretion, disease, inertia, futility, health, cleanliness

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    Mortals, and the giants before them, have been building cities since time immemorial and one of the chief concerns of all mortal city builders has always been sanitation. Many methods have been invented to deal with the endless amounts of organic waste created by large populations, from simple latrine pits to indoor plumbing, and they’ve always worked very well. Extremely well, in fact. To a ridiculous degree if one stopped to think about it. It’s a testament to mortal tendency of ignoring the inexplicable so long as it’s convenient that Ghaunadaur the Vile was discovered only a few centuries ago.

    The Great God of Excretions, as might be expected of such a title, is empowered by (and also literally feeds on) all bodily excretions of all live creatures everywhere in the multiverse. Every crying baby, every drunk throwing up his guts in the alley, every laborer sweating under the load, every flake of dead skin or shed scale or falling leaf of diseases and age, every wound oozing pus and, obviously, every bear out there in the woods; somehow all of these events count as a prayer to Ghaunadaur. It then uses all this massive divine power to draw filth and waste into itself from all over the planes, slowly and steadily siphoning bits and pieces of massed matter until there's nothing left, with an emphasis on bodies of live mortals (leaving them minty fresh and smelling of roses, metaphorically speaking). The Elder Seep seems to have been the reason why even the most insufficient and crude sanitation methods have been resounding successes at keeping massively crowded mortal cities habitable and keep even the most primitive worlds of DnD full of oddly clean and healthy looking people who’d have no idea what shampoo, toothbrush or toilet paper might be. All the unhealthy and harmful matter that, by all rights, should be covering them head to toe is instead gone, slowly and quietly sucked into the Ethereal and added to the evergrowing mass of semi infinite matter that is That Which Lurks. Since Ghaunadaur is inert and seems to have been sitting there secretly making the planes a cleaner place since who knows when, it was concluded that It was a beneficial, if gross, curiosity; one more strange and inexplicable phenomenon of the multiverse to marvel at. Most sages and even deities of knowledge and information agree there’s nothing to fear about It; at least as long as one doesn’t try to enter its tiny demiplane floating in Ethereal, where the laws of physics and metaphysics have broken down under the weight of the incomprehensibly large mass of what would’ve been called a black hole* in a less well designed multiverse.

    And they are correct too, in a way. There is nothing to fear about the Elder Seep now, as It’s been thwarted already. The real reason why Ghaunadaur the Vile was discovered only a few centuries ago despite having been growing since at least the mythical Age of Giants is because It wasn’t there until a few centuries ago. When a band of plucky adventurers on some mortal world was a few moments too late to stop the malevolent ritual performed by mad cultists of some unknown evil power, they were quite relieved to see nothing coming out of the terrifying portal that opened up to a boiling maelstrom of incomprehensibility. They promptly won the day and moved on, leaving the few remaining cultists to flee in shock and confusion. The adventurers would’ve been amused to learn that all of the surviving cultists caught an oddly incurable diarrhea and died shortly afterwards, because they were simple people with simple tastes, but it was no laughing matter. The Cosmic Diarrhea was a genuine piece of the Elder Elemental Evil and, as such, wasn’t subject to this timeflow thing the Allmother had created after His imprisonment. With complete mastery over all matter (****ty as it was) and immunity to time, the Elder Seep drained all of the organic waste that was, is and will ever be into Itself (giving peoples of DnD their irrationally sanitized appearances), gaining a mass larger than the multiverse instantly. Reality broke under this pressure and the biggest possible ball of organic waste crashed through time, falling back towards the beginning. It would’ve hit the moment of Chained God’s imprisonment in the initial stages of the Dawn War and let Him evade capture and retcon literally everything if Overmothers didn’t react (for lack of a better term) in time.

    Instead of that, Tree of Worlds was born. Guardinals of Beastlands in primordial times got a sudden inspiration to plant a tree that’ll let them travel all over the planes and when Ghaunadaur reached a few decades ahead of that moment, Yggdrasil’s colossal roots were in Its way. With a bit of nudging from Luminous Overmother, Tree of Worlds had already planeshifted some of its roots into Elemental Chaos and charged up with Tharizdun’s own power. With Ruinous Overmother’s baleful will, the infinite but undirected elemental power of EEE on both sides shorted itself out when they touched, creating a destructive feedback loop that brought That Which Lurks’ fall into the past to a screeching halt. It stopped roughly on the moment of Yggdrasil’s planting, causing the biggest ball of fertilizer possible to have always been right under Tree of Worlds and allowed it to become the Infinite Tree that it was fated to be (nourishment of a literally infinite tree is another of those mysteries most beings aren’t prone to wonder about). Of course, the backdraft of this caused all sorts of apocalyptic dangers like the Wind Dukes and Atropus to spawn in Elemental Chaos in the coming ages, but it was getting off easy.

    Today, Yggdrasil looks like an infinite tree with an infinite number of branches to those travelling on it and is the safest planar pathway. It can let anyone go from anywhere to anywhere else (with the notable exceptions of Astral Plane, Energy Planes and Sigil) and is the lifeline of a number of mortal worlds that depend on interplanar and interplanetary trade to survive. There are very large numbers of nomads, refugees and fugities that live their whole lives on Tree of Worlds, safe from whatever drove them to seek shelter in the evergreen branches. Exemplars of Beastlands, who consider themselves to be the Tree’s owner, don’t really like all these random peoples wandering around but can’t do anything about it, for Yggdrasil is still pulsing with incredible elemental power and doesn’t allow anyone on it to be harmed or forced to leave. Tree of Worlds might not be sentient, but it is benevolent and prone to banishing and barring entry to those that mean harm to others (even gods are subject to its silent will).

    As for the Elder Seep, It’s sitting still in its tiny demiplane and will continue to do so until the end of time, keeping all mortals clean and healthy and illogically presentable; condemned to toil forever for a task already failed. Its only entertainment is the odd dumb mortal cultist worshipping it as a patron of health and cleanliness. Ghaunadaur shows Its “favor” by not cleaning Its cultists up for a long while, letting them experience the amazing sensations of being a real unwashed mass and watches them try to rationalize it as a good thing. Those that please him further might be blessed with some disfiguring diseases too. Amusement is hard to come by when you’re an inert ball of ****, so Ghaunadaur’ll take what It can get.
    *of ****


    In retrospect, this is a ****ty idea, forget I posted it.
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  28. - Top - End - #178
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    Frankly I'd go with a more classical pre-modern take on unicorn behavior to explain the presence of unicorn knights. Unicorns are beautiful, graceful, powerful and noble fey creatures of the equine persuasion. They are spiritually pure and perfect in every horsey way imaginable, with a big honking spiral horn sticking straight out of their foreheads. Yet they aren't truly free from sin, in fact they're big fans of two of them, namely pride and wrath. That's where young virginal women, and especially "unicorn knights", come in. When unicorns get angry everyone knows it and little can be done about it.

    Yes, just about anyone can calm down a unicorn if they've built up a sufficient rapport with one, but building up that rapport takes time and it's hard. But for reasons unknown even to unicorns, the presence of a virgin, especially a female one, quickly calms them down. That and it's much easier for a non-virgin to build a rapport with a unicorn foal or colt than with a fully grown one, so virgins are pretty much trotted out to calm down strange unicorns and keep them from acting stupidly.

    Unicorn knights are young, at least initially, virginal women whose purpose is to follow and sooth unicorns. Their fighting skills and magical powers are largely to keep up with these magical, narwhal-horned Clydesdales. Yes, unicorn knights fight against evil and heal the sick and afflicted along with their unicorn pals, but this, is their true purpose. They're the Dude to their unicorn friend's Walter Sobchak.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pronounceable View Post
    In retrospect, this is a ****ty idea, forget I posted it.
    I mean, I had always assumed that Yggdrasil grew by leeching all the nutrients out of the lower planes, leeching them barren. This makes surprising amounts of sense as well, though, and acts as a good counterbalance to the 'good = up down = bad' standard trope. It ties up so many loose ends about D&Disms that I'm glad to see it exist... though I wonder how the Otyughs still survive, given that Ghanadaur is taking all the good ****.

    Quote Originally Posted by Pronounceable View Post
    It can let anyone go from anywhere to anywhere else (with the notable exceptions of Astral Plane, Energy Planes and Sigil)
    Before I go nuts here, to confirm: This can't reach the Ordial plane, can it?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Agrippa View Post
    Unicorns are cool
    That'd be a nice unicorn knight. It would've been a great fit if I didn't hate them.
    Quote Originally Posted by Fable Wright View Post
    I wonder how the Otyughs still survive, given that Ghanadaur is taking all the good ****.
    At first otyugs were gonna be Its own creations and/or chosen peoples to inherit the earths but it didn't fit with the rest of Its stuff. Maybe this particular Elder Seep just likes the goofy buggers and lets them have a bit to eat.

    No, there's no Ordial Plane so Yggdrasil doesn't reach it. And even if one day I find something for it, there won't be life in it (like Shadowfell) so the Tree still won't reach it.


    Also I really wish this Ghaunadaur was real. It's probably the only one of the 100+ deities I've rejiggered here that I'd actually want out in the real world.

    e: You know what? Lemme put in some news items and random tidbits here. It might tide the thread some more and create more stretches of posts that aren't mine.
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    -Fenmarel the Lone Wolf is in the works now, so there'll be some actual info on Seldarine for once. You should look forward to the Seldarine God of Survival and Suicide.
    -Nerull is up to something wicked involving reincarnation. Dunno yet what exactly will come of it but it'll be sad/bad.
    -All those needlessly many naga types are in fact different sexes and one of each is needed to breed. It's best to not attempt visualizing.
    -When humanoids mate, an offspring of mother's race is born. There's no half-whatevers because that **** is %100 idiotic, just let the players play a ****ing orc, nothing wrong with playing an orc, this ain't Middle Earth.
    -The actual Elemental Prince of Fire is the Phoenix, a massive monster in depths of Elemental Chaos, and isn't amused by efreeti's bull****. He has three counterparts too (still haven't been determined tho).
    -I still have no idea why and how trolls roll.
    -They don't call him the Knockoff Father out in the planes for nothing, as Emmantiensien can also attest.
    -And yeah, Emmantiensien will be around in some form at some point. He'll not be friendly to treehugging hippies.
    Last edited by Pronounceable; 2017-06-13 at 03:26 AM.
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